Fun in the Leaves!

We had some fun in the leaves outside on Wednesday. It was an unusually warm day for November, so we had to take advantage of it!!!

Teacher Appreciation & Blooming Flowers

This week is all about "Teacher Appreciation". The other day I sure felt appreciated! I got a special homemade teacher necklace, chocolate, and a bunch of dandelions from some sweet girls.

Oh yes, you know it is officially spring outside when the kiddos come in with handfuls of these weeds...errr..flowers after recess!

Today there was a vase of pretty lilacs on my desk as a fresh reminder that things are blooming all around me! Speaking of blooming....I am sooo proud of all my Kindergarten graduates this school year! They have definitely have continued to grow and "bloom" in their schoolwork. Most of them are all in 2nd grade work already!

Ayme & Miss Follett

Snow Fun

With some recent snowfall, the school playground has turned into a winter wonderland! I promised the kids that if they brought snow boots, I would take them outside for recess. The majority did remember to bring them, so yesterday they had quite an adventure on the snowy mounds. The sun was so bright that the snow was practically glistening all over the playground. It was quite the lovely winter day!

"Do you wanna build a snowman?"

Having Fun in the Fall with Friends :-)

Fun in the Leaves

The elementary students enjoyed playing in the leaves on this warm, fall day! Most of the girls spent all of recess gathering leaves into as big of a pile as they could. When I announced there was just 4 minutes left of recess, they all went crazy, throwing the leaves up in the air and just having a grand ole' time. It is when they started coming after me with piles of leaves that I decided it was time to line up. ;-)

Get Miss Follett!!!....ummm, not happening..."Time to line up!!" :-)

A Picnic Snack & Hungry Caterpillars

Today was another beautiful spring day, so I looked for any opportunity to spend time outdoors with my girls. We had our snack outside picnic-style, and then the girls enjoyed extra playground time. I definitely got my exercise giving these girls "under-doggies" on the swings!

Our caterpillars have doubled in size in just one week! The girls are still in love with them, and are in awe at how big they are getting. It never ceases to amaze me how these creepy, crawly little creatures turn into such beautiful butterflies. Only an amazing God could do something like this! :-)

Our Spring Exploration

Today I was quite anxious to be outside with my girls. It was simply not a day to stay in the classroom. It was a day to go EXPLORING! Of course, the girls were all for that! We went to the back edges of the church property to explore the creek. The girls could have stayed back there all day. :-)

On our exploration, the girls were excited to spot some daffodils. A definite first sign of spring!! We picked one to bring back as evidence of our exploration :-) Everyone wanted to have a picture with it. Even Miss Follett got her picture taken....5 times. {Each girl had to have a turn, but hey, it gave me a lot of choices on which one I liked the best. :-)}

 

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

Today's simple art project was coloring a kite picture to put on our classroom bulletin board. I was actually keeping it simple (ie: no messy paint involved!). Well, apparently that was just too boring for my girls. :-) They took the leftover paper from their kite project, and decided to make actual kites! All that was required of me was to assist with the taping and string. At first they were just playing with them in the classroom, but that didn't satisfy them too long.

Today just happened to be a rather WINDY spring day, and what better weather needed in order to fly a kite?! So we ventured outside and the girls had some fun with their kites. The tape wasn't extremely strong, so there were a few occasions when the strong wind would whip their kites across the playground and they would have to chase them, but for the most part it was a huge success! Perhaps next time we'll attempt REAL kites...maybe :-)

The kite pictures, which inspired this afternoon's activity, are now decorating our spring bulletin board in the classroom!

Spring Painting

Today was  "winter removal" in the Kindergarten classroom. I was sooo ready to put away the snowflakes and snowmen, and get out the flowers, butterflies, and birds!! :-)

This afternoon I enlisted the help of my girls to get the spring decorations moving along. They each painted 2 flowers, 2 butterflies, and a bird. Once these are dry and cut out, I will put them around the room to add to the spring-like atmosphere!

Whenever the paint is out, the girls thoroughly enjoy themselves! I let them pick whatever colors they wanted, so needless to say, by the end of the painting experience, the colors were rather blended together in dark hues of blue, maroon, or brown on their plates. I didn't want to just throw all that excess paint away! Well, we still had about 20 minutes left of the day, so I decided to get out a roll of white paper from the art closet, some small sponges (cut into a variety of shapes) and let them have fun up in the lunchroom.

It made the last few minutes of the day rather crazy as we were trying to scrub paint off hands and arms, gather folders, coats and backpacks in a matter of 5 minutes...but hey, it was Friday. Might as well end the week with a bang!! :-)

Happy First Day of Spring!

What do we all do around here on the first day of spring? Get a free Rita's Italian ice, of course! Today the 6th graders and I headed to Rita's for a special "field trip" just for them. Their teacher was originally going to be the one taking them, but something came up so I was asked to do it.

A free Rita's ice??? Hmmm...well...if I HAVE to go :-)

It was actually a surprise for these 4 students, so when they found out, they were quite excited that they were the only ones getting to go on this special adventure. 

We had a blast! Something about getting out of school early, getting to hang with your friends, plus getting a sweet sugary treat, made these 4 kiddos rather ummm...energetic? hyper? cRaZy?!! A few times I thought I actually had my Kindergarten girls with me instead. :-)

Fun with Model Magic

So, yes, my blog has been silent all week. The reason? My lesson plans went up in smoke! Well, no, not literally...but because of this change...



Yep, getting tired of these snow days! Oh well...we were glad to be back together today. I had a special treat for the girls to play with this afternoon - Model Magic! It is kinda like super soft and moldable white clay. I brought in some new markers as well, so they could actually color the Model Magic and make it turn different colors. Needless to say, they were quite entertained for the rest of the afternoon! 

 

The new markers I got the girls are called "pip squeak" markers because they are so tiny. There are actually 64 different colors. Cally was quite thrilled to discover the names of each color marker. Some of the names had all of us giggling! I guess you have to really have an imagination to come up with names for 64 different shades of color! Here are a few...

My girls with their "innocent" sweet smiles...

My girls letting their REAL crazy personalities show! :-)

More Snow Fun!

Rosy Cheeks & Cotton Balls

This morning the girls were begging me to go outside to play in the snow. I decided that we would go out for a few minutes before lunch. That was PLENTY of time for us all to get cold, rosy cheeks. Although the girls had a blast playing in the snow, they were ready to go back to the warm classroom!

Here are a few cute shots of my rosy cheek girlies having fun in the snow...

 Later this afternoon, the girls made cotton ball snowmen. It always amazes me how unique their creations end up being although they all have the same materials!